Brocade boost for KDU’s campus network

• Deploys wired/ wireless network to deliver mission-critical uptime
• Hits 99.5% service level target, enjoys 50% gain in IT staff productivity

 
KDU University College has deployed a highly automated, flexible, and scalable network from Brocade at its new 10-acre campus in the Klang Valley suburb of Glenmarie (pic above).
 
The network is designed for reliable 24x7 cloud service access, whether from the university college’s private cloud data centre or public cloud service providers.
 
This would enable students and staff to get online from anywhere on the campus while minimising the institution’s operational overhead, Brocade said in a statement.
 
KDU University College’s green campus in Glenmarie currently hosts around 3,200 students and 300 staff, with student headcount due to rise in the 2016/ 2017 academic year.

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With a greenfield site as its starting point for the campus development, the university college was keen to avoid deploying over-engineered, overly complex, and costly networking infrastructure, Brocade said in its statement.
 
It selected the Brocade ICX family of stackable switches, which provide a simplified, flexible foundation for the campus network that the university can easily adapt and expand over time, the company claimed.
 
“The ability to mix and match switches at both the access and aggregation layers of the architecture is one way Brocade has helped our IT organisation easily scale our campus LAN (local area network),” said KDU University College senior information systems manager Yong Chee Seng.
 
“This means we can add ports as needed, without adding new management complexity.
 
“Being able to manage the entire campus as one logical chassis with Brocade Network Advisor management software means that advanced switching features and services can also be propagated to all switches in the stack,” he added.
 
Brocade ICX 6610 and ICX 6450 switches have been deployed across nine different switch rooms, with performance and availability assured with multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 40 GbE inter-switch stacking links, Brocade said.
 
Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) capabilities support wireless network access points, IP (Internet Protocol) telephones, and IP video cameras across the campus.
 
In addition, the whole infrastructure is integrated with Brocade HyperEdge Architecture so that it can be managed as a single intelligent device, the company said.
 
Unified end-to-end management and automation also extends to the campus WiFi system from Aruba Networks, which works closely with Brocade on technology integration to combine two best-of-breed architectures, it added.
 
“KDU University College’s students expect to be able to connect up to the campus network, stream video, and make use of other latency-sensitive applications on their mobile devices,” said Brocade country manager for Malaysia, Sean Ong.
 
“When thousands of students are doing that, it puts a huge load on a university campus network.
 
“But the KDU infrastructure is up to the task as the more Brocade ICX switches are in a stack, the greater the resilience and backplane performance.
 
“From the university college’s operations perspective, scaling the network by adding more Brocade ICX switches makes no difference, because they are auto-configured under the HyperEdge Architecture,” he added.
 
According to KDU’s IT team, the university college has been able to comfortably achieve its 99.5% service level target with the Brocade campus network, the company claimed.
 
It is also enjoying a 50% gain in information systems staff productivity compared with network operations at its former campus, as a result of infrastructure and management simplification using the HyperEdge Architecture and Brocade Network Advisor management software, it added.
 
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